In 2010, an organisation calling itself the ‘Circumcision Foundation of Australia’ (CFA) was established, with its sole aim being to reverse the dramatic decline in the number of circumcisions that are performed in Australia. The CFA presents itself as being a group of credible, well educated ‘public health advocates’ but its stance puts it severely at odds with conventional wisdom on this issue. In fact, as The Age recently reported, ‘no authoritative health policy maker in any jurisdiction with a frequency of relevant health conditions as low as that in Australia recommends circumcision as an individual or public health measure’. Anyone who takes a closer look at the activities and associations of some of this lobby group’s members will therefore surely ask themselves the following question: ‘What are the real motivations of the CFA?’

In the interests of transparency and public awareness, we at the ‘Intactivists of Australasia’ have compiled…

Foregen is an organization attempting to pioneer regenerative techniques to be applied to foreskin restoration. They recently completed their first experiments.

foregen is currently working with scientists at the University of Bologna’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Italy to fully regenerate bovine foreskins. We have successfully decellularized these foreskins, thus completing our first benchmark! The extracellular matrices of these foreskins will be cryogenically stored until the results of our work are fully analyzed and ready to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Once we have completed the analysis, we will fully regenerate these animal foreskins with the use of stem cells.

I fully support this research. It is one strain of the cultural-medical struggle against compulsory infant circumcision so prevalent in the United States and in other parts of the world today.

The Twentieth Pitts Lectureship in Medical Ethics at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, held on October 18-19, 2013, marked an awesome team win that activists for genital integrity were able to achieve when I debated Michael Brady, M.D. and effectively also debated Douglas Diekema, M.D., two members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Task Force on Circumcision. Other team members present and helping immeasurably with this landmark success were ARC Legal Advisor Peter Adler, longtime activist Aubrey Taylor, and her husband, Angel Alonso Terron.

Brady was my opponent in the debate about whether circumcision is legal and ethical. Diekema, despite initial claims of objectivity, joined with Brady as a proponent of circumcision.

Brady gave a presentation on Friday, October 18, 2013 that closely tracked his PowerPoint.

My response followed. Our PowerPoint was by that point persuasive enough that, as they each personally told me later, two (!) of the five physician presenters who are not AAP Task Force members were completely convinced by our arguments and went from being pretty strongly pro-circumcision prior to the event to coming to oppose the procedure based on our arguments. (This also is a good testament to the open-mindedness and objectivity of these doctors.)

Following my presentation was a scheduled 45-minute debate between Dr. Brady and me. We each got our blows in, but it quickly became clear that Brady was unaware of recent political developments and pertinent medical studies.

On Saturday, we were each allowed five minutes to summarize our views. After I spoke for the full five minutes, Dr. Brady was unable to successfully rebut any of my points, speaking for just over a minute in an effective concession of defeat. Brady referred to me in his short talk as “Dr., er excuse me, Mr. Svoboda.” On Friday, Dr. Brady had audibly complained about how the organizers had allowed “non-physician presenters” to speak, of which I was the only one.

On Saturday, October 19, after each presenter spoke, an open discussion ensued amongst all eight panelists for about 2.5 hours, the last half of which was focused on male circumcision. Peter, Aubrey, and Angel each made very powerful and effective points that helped move the discussion further in our direction. Aubrey and Angel also videotaped, as I had arranged with the conference organizers, all conference proceedings on Friday, and were supposed to record Saturday as well but some presenters asked that no recording be done on Saturday and this was agreed to without informing me of the change.

A few of the key points Peter, Aubrey, Angel and I were able to drive home over the two days included:

Even the AAP is calling for further studies regarding the connection (if any) between male circumcision and HIV, and eminent scholar Michel Garenne says you need a condom even if you are circumcised, so what does circumcision gain you?

Aubrey had a great analysis of how Dr. Brady was treating a healthy body part as if it is a tumor, pathologizing functional tissue.

Dr. Brady said in his PowerPoint: If the benefits can’t be clearly shown to outweigh problems, then circumcision should not be done. I argued, does not the fact that 38 eminent physicians (37 of whom are in Europe) say in the AAP’s own journal that we shouldn’t do it in itself cast sufficient doubt that the practice should be stopped?

As I asked near the end of the event, “If circumcision is so great why doesn’t the AAP recommend it? I would think the AAP would be taking out ads in the New York Times to say that everybody should get circumcised. Why the weird balancing act in which the AAP says that circumcision is not recommended but that Medicaid should cover it?”

Angel asked if people present could explain the functions of the foreskin and no one answered it, including Brady and Diekema. Brady said, “I don’t think anybody knows the functions of the foreskin,” then reiterated, in nearly identical words, “Nobody knows the functions of the foreskin.” I noted that there was not a word about the functions of the foreskin in the 2012 AAP report, and asked, shouldn’t we know something about the functions of the healthy body part that is being removed?

One amusing aspect: Diekema criticized me on Friday for allegedly being unfair in emphasizing a sentence where the AAP makes admission that the complication rates are unknown. So the next day in my five minutes I read three sentences from that same passage in full, quoting directly from the AAP report, and pointing out several other interesting points contained therein. Here’s what I read: “The true incidence of complications after newborn circumcision is unknown, in part due to differing definitions of ‘complication’ and differing standards for determining the timing of when a complication has occurred (i.e., early or late). Adding to the confusion is the commingling of ‘early’ complications, such as bleeding or infection, with ‘late’ complications such as adhesions and meatal stenosis. Also, complication rates after an in-hospital procedure with trained personnel may be far different from those of the developing world and/or by untrained ritual providers.” I then pointed out all the doubt and uncertainty contained therein: Confusion, complication rates differing, differing definitions, differing standards, unknown incidence. After all this, Diekema alleged in his five minutes that I was still quoting selectively.

The audience saw through all of this eventually. An African woman was smiling at Aubrey toward the end and the whole row of audience members were clearly on her side. Angel and Aubrey and Peter each was awesome. Aubrey had this brilliant time in the sun where she was allowed to speak for over five minutes and threw the whole issue into a new light in a brilliant way by developing the detailed analysis I mentioned of the pathologization of healthy tissue. Angel talked about his own experience being an intact man and no one could argue with that. The circumcision advocates tried to blame female genital cutting on patriarchy and argued that if male circumcision was bad, men who have all the power under patriarchy, would have stopped it long ago. In reply to this, Angel talked about male denial and about Sparta, an extremely patriarchal society where men faced extreme oppression, proving that society-wide male oppression can and does exist, even under patriarchy.

I was able to cite the “well-known anti-circumcision group” the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and all of those other European organizations that I didn’t fit into my PowerPoint on Friday. The circumcision advocates couldn’t say much about that except they offered the response that I was just citing individuals, not all of Europe. Diekema accused me of oversimplifying, and I responded that no, these issues are incredibly complex and I wasn’t oversimplifiying anything. Rather, I used the word “Europe” to describe the location of several countries that have recently found circumcision to be illegal. Then Diekema said that those are only physicians’ groups, and hence not all physicians, and that I was oversimplifying again. This weak argument essentially refuted itself.

After we effectively prevailed in Saturday’s panel, Brady responded by claiming that he had inside information that both “Australia” (presumably the Royal Australasian College of Physicians) and Canada are about to issue position statements echoing that of the AAP. No evidence was presented, however, and one may be forgiven for suspecting that perhaps no such evidence exists.

Today we submitted our paper to the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, which is publishing a special issue in early 2014 devoted to the proceedings at the Twentieth Pitts Lectureship in Medical Ethics.

This was personally perhaps the single most gratifying experience I have had in my nearly two decades as a promoter of genital integrity.

This week, one Mark Joseph Stern went on a rant in Slate.com, accusing intactivists of being a “fringe group” that is “drowning out any discussion of facts.” His piece is titled “How Circumcision Broke the Internet.”

Of course, the reality is just the opposite. The internet, in fact, broke circumcision.

The freedom to talk frankly and the ability to find the alternative narrative online is what has so spooked Mr. Stern. His panic leaps off the page at the prospect that circumcision in fact may be seen in the very near future much more widely as the invasive practice that it is.

He clearly fears that the 100 year narrative that circumcision improves the social and physical hygiene of its victims will be overturned as the anti-choice, anti-freedom, useless, harmful, and paternal imposition that it is. I, for one, found his palpable fear and anger refreshing.

For a century, men who have been harmed by circumcision imposed in infancy have suffered the same sense of powerlessness in the face of these “for his own good” attitudes. Mr. Stern’s reaction is the other side.

Thankfully, there are others writing in the media that have something else to say about genital cutting of infant boys. Andrew Sullivan responded to Stern in some detail, but one paragraph stands out.

What Stern has to address – and, despite fulminations and aspersions and disparagement of those seeking to leave infants alone, he never does – is why on earth are we even talking about this? What could possibly justify a horrible, traumatic procedure removing part of an infant boy’s body? Those who favor doing something seem to me to be the ones who need to make the case. The default doesn’t need to be defended. What has to be defended is such an intervention – which is irreversible and which is done without the consent of the infant. If you are concerned about future health hazards, why not remove the tonsils or the appendix after birth? The only reason this barbaric practice endures is religious fundamentalism.

Indeed.

The last point that needs to be made regarding Mr. Stern is that he cannot hold the views that he does about circumcision and honestly support the freedom and openness that he espouses regarding gay rights. The principles supporting gay rights and forced circumcision of infant boys are polar opposites. Such cognitive dissonance is jarring enough for his readers. I hope one day Mr. Stern can right himself and bring his contradictory belief system back into balance.

The Vancouver Pride Society has withdrawn its permission to allow intactivists to occupy a slot in this year’s parade. At the official unveiling of a city resolution in recognition of the Pride celebration, intactivists showed up to demonstrate and demand reinstatement.

What is an intactivist?

noun
1. an especially active, vigorous advocate of children's rights, especially the right to genital integrity or the right to be free from genital cutting (circumcision).

adjective
2. of or pertaining to intactivism or intactivists: an intactivist organization for the right of male, female, and intersex children to be free from genital cutting.

3. advocating for children by vigorously opposing genital cutting (circumcision), especially the cutting of children who lack capacity to consent: Intactivist opponents of the American Academy of Pediatrics picketed their annual conference in New Orleans.